First Attempt at Macro

Outdoors - crab apple blossom - natural light - grey skies - no sun.




Indoors - top of a tiny (40mm x 30mm) Russian, handpainted, wooden box (see photo no. 3 for scale) - natural light - no sun.




Outdoors - taken to illustrate the tiny size of the box in photo no. 2 and the lack of sun




My initial thoughts :-

# Manual focussing is testing on the eyes.
# Getting the light right is tricky.
# Sunlight would be better.
# Wind is a problem moving the subject matter around.
# I probably need a new tripod head.
# I think that Dan and Clarky must hypnotise their insect subjects to keep them still


Tried another one late afternoon, when it was raining outside.

Indoors - natural light.

Any wind at all can be really difficult to deal with when this close - you can actually get a flower grip that attaches to the camera for this type of thing

These are great pictures. The detail on the blossom, especially the muted light on the petals is very nice. I wonder if you could probably have afforded even tighter DOF with a larger aperture to get greater impact to the shot.

Interesting picture of the box, it certainly has wonderful detail of the original and the natural light brings out the colours nicely.

For your first attempts, these are excellent, I'd be more than happy with them. Well done!

Dan

Great shots Hyram I really like the coin and Russian box pics.

I agree with all Dans assessments, except lay off the beans if wind is a problem

I use a pistol grip on my monopod, its not a fiddly as a ball head.

I get Dan to hold the bugs down while i shoot them

Very good first attempts and i look forward to more of them.

Yes, my arms are 12,000 miles long.

Dan

It must be all those bananas you eat